News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Cookeville City Council will consider new chemical tanks for the water treatment plant Thursday.
Water and Sewer Department Director Barry Turner told council during a Monday work session the city needs to replace the chemical tank that burst last year. Turner said the ongoing water plant expansion will bring their capacity to 21.5 million gallons and they need another tank to support the increase.
“We’re going to have to take the roof off the chemical building to replace that tank,” Turner said. “While we got the roof off, there’s two other tanks in there that were going to be refurbished ’cause they were going to hold another chemical so we’re just going to replace them while we have the roof off.”
Turner said they will also have to adjust the piping and spill containment area of the building as part of the extra work. Turner said the work will add some $409,000 and 235 days of construction time to the expansion project.
“I want to mention that includes 150 days that we were going to owe them for weather delays and for delays getting the pipe and such,” Turner said.
Turner said the new tanks are not meant to be a major upgrade over the old ones in terms of additional features beyond the extra capacity.
“The other two tanks that we’re replacing were not designed for that original chemical,” Turner said. “We were going to refurbish them in this project to make them compatible with the ferric chloride that we use in the tanks, but this will have three new tanks that (are) made for ferric chloride.”
Turner said he was glad to see that the assessment for the work came out quite a bit lower than they were anticipating. The council will vote on the change order for the new tanks during their Thursday meeting.
